As an information recording medium capable of optically recording information, there is known a DVD-R/RW for example, and there exists an information recording apparatus for recording the information onto the information recording medium. Such the information recording apparatus is also called “drive apparatus”. At the time of information recording, the drive apparatus irradiates, onto the information recording medium, a recording light such as a laser light with an appropriate recording power, and forms pits correspondent to the recording information onto the recording surface of the information recording medium. Therefore, for precise information recording, it is necessary that the recording light of an appropriate recording power is maintained.
On the disc such as a CD-R/RW, the DVD-R/RW and a DVD+R/RW, information, such as an optimum recording power value and a recording power ratio for performing the precise recording onto the recording medium, is prerecorded. It is noted that the recording power ratio is a ratio of plural levels in a laser driving waveform (also referred to as “strategy”) at the time of recording the information. Therefore, the drive apparatus performs calibration of a power of the laser light emitted from a laser light source before actual information recording onto the information recording medium. At this time, by a normal method, management of emission duty of the laser waveform emitted from the laser light source at the time of the calibration is not particularly performed.
However, it is necessary that the power of the laser light emitted from the laser diode serving as the laser light source is increased at the time of high-speed recording. Therefore, some laser emission waveforms used at the time of the calibration may problematically become larger than a rated output value of the laser diode.